Trojan Horse
by Imipak
Summary: A student from the late 20th century suffers a succession of misfortunes and ends up in the 25th with nothing but a lump of stone. Can the crew of the Enterprise save her or is she a necessary sacrifice to pay for the actions of another? (First Trek story, please do not kill)
1. Prologue

Disclaimer: My first Trek story. Standard disclaimers apply. TNG is owned by Paramount, except insofar as it exists in a parallel universe. If you're looking for the Trek stuff, that's in chapters 2 onwards for the most part. Please review.

Prologue

The date: November 1996

The man couldn't read the inscription. That didn't matter. He doubted his bosses could, either. That, too, didn't matter. Given the total lack of security, he rather suspected the people who technically owned it didn't realize it was there. Convenient. That meant they wouldn't miss it. The quarter of a million advance, same after, that mattered.

He didn't ask questions, especially ones like "why are you paying half a million for a slab of rock with markings on it", as those tended to deprive people like him of an honest living. Well, he wasn't lying to anyone, so it wasn't dishonest as such…

Lifting the rock from the underground fault was simplicity itself. The vault was in a more-or-less intact Bronze Age tunnel that ran under the mansion. He had broken in through an almost intact Roman hypocaust, buried deep in the ground, that had itself run over a section of tunnel that had run close to the boundary of the modern-day property.

From there, it was a simple stroll through the decaying stonework, past all of the surface-level security, to the antechamber and then to the vault itself.

The return journey was equally uneventful. Through the tunnels, a scramble up to the hypocaust, a short crawl through, then a pause until a guard went away. A scramble over the fence and nobody was any the wiser.

Handing over the stone was an altogether briefer experience. The man in the shadows showed the money was all there and accounted for. The thief, in turn, placed the stone on the table before screaming in terror and agony as his life force was ripped from him.

The man in the shadows smiled. Apparently there would be no charge for the service today.


	2. Twentieth century Earth

Disclaimer: My first Trek story. Standard disclaimers apply. TNG is owned by Paramount, except insofar as it exists in a parallel universe. If you're looking for the Trek stuff, that's in chapters 2 onwards for the most part. Please review.

Chapter 1 - Twentieth Century Earth

The date: October 1997

Cities tend towards being vast, but that vastness has different qualities depending on the place and beholder. In the case of the city of Peillacos and Carol, that constituted having five minutes between university lectures to complete a journey that would take ten to fifteen minutes at her current rate.

The problem seemed to revolve around there being other people. She was not keen on them, but those that were lecturers or shopkeepers were unfortunately necessary for grades and survival respectively.

This was not the first time she had cursed coming here. It wasn't world-famous, it had no particular glamour, but it was cheap and it was very very good. How they managed this, Carol chose not to consider. Research was expensive, teaching not much cheaper. She doubted the fees for a year would cover the expenses for a week, even if you factored in the profit from the shops the university owned.

Industry was not invited in. Neither was government. It was the lack of either, along with a total lack of cooperation with other universities, that guaranteed its lack of presence on the world stage. Still, conspiracy theories about who paid for it - and why - weren't productive. Studying was.

This was also not the first time she had sent people flying and most students had learned the hard way that being a speed bump in her path gave a fascinating insight into the lives of bricks, paving stones and the animals that called these home.

She got to the lecture hall just as people were starting to file in. Good. Nothing missed. She settled down and prepared to take notes.

Afterwards, she got called to her supervisor's office. As usual. Same complaints, same reason. Davis was not going to be happy, she thought.

Once she was in the office and the door closed, Dr Davis breathed out a sigh. "You are on course for either a top honours or a police cell for assault. Possibly both. Do you have any idea how hard you're making this?"

Carol thought this through then shrugged. "I can't move the halls closer."

"You can increase your time, if you drop a course. Nobody else attempts a triple major. You might also have time to have a life or lunch. Right now, you have neither."

"What's the other option?"

"Other option?"

"I don't think you'd be offering me the impossible unless you've something else in mind."

"Hmmm. Here's the other option, then. The university needs something dangerous done. Discretely. By someone it can easily disown as a reckless lunatic, if necessary. You fit the description perfectly. It will require until the end of the term. Lectures will be recorded for you. Coursework and exams to be done over the summer."

Carol nearly choked in fury. The alternatives to being annoying was, apparently, to be dead, thrown to wolves or sent to summer school. She wasn't sure which was worse.

"It sounds like a bad spy thriller with a terminal case of defective subplots."

Her supervisor pulled a grin. "That's not too bad of a description, except you don't have to spy, you don't get fancy gadgets or a car and thrills will be limited. So, aside from not being close, you've got the idea."

Carol wanted to punch him, except that would look bad on the transcripts. "What do you need done?"

"An item was stolen from a museum storage room by an organisation that steals to order for collectors."

She sensed that this wasn't entirely accurate, but didn't bother pursuing it.

"And you want me to steal it back for them?"

"No, no, we need it sent to the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in India. You've been volunteered as courier."

"What is it?"

"A piece of rock, maybe one foot by one foot, with ancient writing carved on it."

"What does it say?"

"Hard to say if it says anything. They may be just random strange symbols."

Carol snorted. "And if you believed that, you wouldn't be paying to get it to India. What are the people there supposed to do with it, put it in space?"

"Actually, yes. However, that's not important. Your degree is."

He had her there. She wanted that degree. She was not a thief, or dishonest, by nature but apparently the one thing she wanted most was contingent being one. At least it was to steal something back. Well, possibly. However, she had to be sure.

"And if I refuse?"

"You'll spend the night in a police cell and be kicked off your course, unless I decide you're a talking hazard and not just a walking one."

The casual way this was spoken suggested to Carol that she'd best think that this was definitely a noble salvage operation. The chills down her spine were otherwise going to settle down and raise a family.

One series of flights to Serbia later, Carol rented a car and attempted to drive from the airport to a cheap hotel she had been booked into. Interestingly, the reservation had apparently been made a week prior to her agreeing to go, which didn't sit well with her. Nor did the letter, which she'd been asked to deliver. Thief and postal worker? The address on the front meant nothing to her.

Being able to drive and being able to drive elsewhere were two completely different things, particularly as this was an older car with manual transmission. Apparently, a few other things were manual as well as she had great difficulty getting the car started, moving or going around corners.

Eventually she arrived, intact apart from her nerves and temper. The room was... not in the best of shape, but as she had not planned to actually use it, that was barely acceptable.

Freshening up was quick, easy and limited to soft drinks, a quick change of clothes and a round of inventive curses and expletives in private.

The journey out of Belgrade deep into the country and to the house being discretely used to store stolen items was revealing. It was huge and well guarded. The police uniforms on some of the guards patrolling possibly indicated either an official awareness or an official tolerance. Or maybe just moonlighting, the recent war had not helped the economy. Not her concern.

Her concern was how to break into a house with virtually nothing beyond a rental car and the clothes on her back. Further up the road, she gave up on trying to conceal the car and parked it across the road, handbrake off. That was going to annoy someone and she felt like being annoying.

Lying in the grass beside the road, she wondered how many ticks and other vermin she'd have to contend with, what poisonous and venomous creatures lived here and whether she'd die of boredom before anything happened.

As luck would have it, a truck drove up. The armed guard up front told her little, as she had no idea if that was common. The guard got out and pushed the car aside. She had to keep out of sight of the driver, so she carefully approached from a blind spot. Now all she had to do was find a hiding spot where they wouldn't search - as they were bound to suspect a hitch-hiker with that stunt.

She needn't have bothered worrying. A second guard, in the back, had a gun to her head and was indicating that lying on the ground was a very smart place to be.

A short while later, she was in the house. Not in the way she wanted, although truth be told she had expected it. She was still irritated with herself, though.

The gentleman who entered gestured for her to sit. The two rifles aimed in her direction lowered her resistance to orders. The man spoke, his English difficult due to a strong Slavic accent but not impossible.

"You would not make a very good thief, Miss...?"

"Duncan. Carol Duncan."

It occurred to her that they would either have checked the flight, hotel and car rental by now or would do. Lying about the verifiable did not seem smart.

The man nodded. "Very good. You are wise enough to be honest about that. Let us see what else you can be honest about. Who sent you?"

Everything had been booked via the university under its name. Carol wondered about that at the time, but thought she maybe saw a madness to the method, or vice versa.

"Peillacos University."

"I have... looked into them. A most curious place. A city built to accommodate a university, money from thin air... You work for some interesting people, Miss Duncan. Very interesting and very discrete. Why did they send you?"

Here Carol paused. She wasn't sure how safe it was to go into areas the man couldn't verify. Besides, she really didn't know a whole lot.

"Ah! You show much wisdom for one so young. Knowing when to be circumspect is commendable. No matter, we have very little that would interest them and I can therefore conclude what it is. It is a little surprising a place so full of great minds would send someone with no experience and no means to break in..."

He paused, considering some new insight. "Maybe... They never expected you to steal. You understand we only sell to the agreed purchaser, stealing from them would be bad for business. People might regard us as dishonest."

Carol thought fast. If she was here to negotiate, what was she here to negotiate with? It was then she remembered a letter she'd been given with no explanation. She still had it.

"There's a letter in the inside pocket of my jacket. I think it may be for you."

The man looked inquisitive. "Take it out. Slowly. And put it on the plate that will be passed to you."

She did as instructed, nervously. She had no idea if she was doing the right thing. She was then instructed to pass the plate back very carefully. Fighting her nerves, she did so.

The letter was opened and read by one of the guards. It was in a language she did not know, so could make nothing of it. Once the guard finished, the man barked a laugh before giving one of the men an order. A phone call later and the gentleman nodded.

"It would appear the original buyer is... unable to collect at this time and the university desires that you retrieve the item on behalf of the buyer. The university has transferred some additional funds to cover the inconvenience. Highly irregular, of course, but it is true, we cannot warehouse such items forever and you apparently have credentials... of a most interesting calibre."

Carol was sweating profusely. She wasn't going to assume this meant she was still going to be breathing the next day, or indeed what it meant at all.

A gesture and the guard who had made the call made a second call. A short time later and another guard appeared. He talked to the man briefly, before the man stood up.

"Very well, Miss Duncan. The vehicle you rented, which we shall most generously call a car, is outside. You may verify the merchandise before you leave."

The stone was as described, and was very carefully packed. Indeed, the care taken over ensuring the stone's safety far exceeded any value the stone could have, in Carol's eyes.

She did not bother going back to the hotel, her stuff had been thrown into the back without much care or attention. She realized that this had probably been done for expediency. If they had killed her, she could have vanished entirely.

After going straight to the airport, she called her supervisor. "I..." she began.

"Have a flight to catch." The voice at the other end gave her an airline and a flight number, then hung up.

At the check-in desk, the tickets were waiting for her. She wasn't asked for ID. After handing over the luggage, she was escorted smartly around the security to a chartered flight lounge. From there, she was taken to a smaller aircraft. She was apparently the only passenger on this flight and was to receive full VIP treatment.

The facial expressions on the stewardess made it clear she had no idea why this young woman with messed-up hair, bruised face and grass-stained student clothes was being given absolute luxury, but that she was being paid extremely well to supply it.

Carol saw no need to indulge on the flight but was keenly aware that she could have anything she wanted, anything at all, as long as it was there to have and she wanted it or swung that way. Instead, to the stewardess' great relief, she chose to keep her head clear and herself to herself, and to focus on what was going on.

She could have made this trip on regular flights, the risk of damage to the crate was low, it would be cheaper and less conspicuous. Ergo, this was not routine. She'd been played by the university in her Serbian adventure and expected this to be no different. This was not being done for her, she had no relevance except as a delivery system. She couldn't call herself a courier, that would imply a level of humanness.

She was also confused about another thing. If the buyer was known, why not wait for them to collect before killing them? Why this elaborate game? And why kill them anyway? Weren't there better ways to do things? This wasn't the middle ages.

Also, why put this thing into space instead of studying it?

She felt she could identify with Lewis Carroll's character of Alice, except that his stories at least had some sort of internal logic.

A couple of stops for fuel along the way and they reached the spaceport's airport.

As the flight had progressed and Carol still hadn't been demanding or unpleasant, but rather courteous and quiet, the stewardess had consented to a couple of genuine smiles and - when Carol was looking elsewhere - a puzzled frown. This was not some rich kid burning money, this was a frightened kid. Still, it wasn't hers to judge. She'd forgotten about Carol entirely within minutes of landing.

Carol took charge of the crate and her luggage as she headed from the terminal to the main part of the spaceport. There she met with the chief scientist, who took the crate from her, and a doctor, who escorted her to a clinic.

"You've had a rough day, we want to make sure you are well", he explained unconvincingly.

The check-up was suspiciously thorough, so she was grateful to be handed a glass of water and a bed to rest on before her homework journey. Despite the comfort of the flight over, her adrenaline made rest or sleep impossible. She wondered if that was part of the idea of the luxury, to get her to rest. Well, too late now.

She downed the glass of water, placed it vaguely on the table, rolled over and fell asleep. Later, she would wonder about just how fast that had happened.

When she awoke, everything around her was rattling violently. She thought it was an earthquake, then everything came sharply into focus.

This was not the clinic or an aircraft. That was not a bed, that was some sort of couch. She was not wearing her clothes, she was wearing some sort of pressure suit or spacesuit. She'd seen enough TV to know what those looked like.

Apparently the crate wasn't the only thing going into space. She was furious. This was not part of the bargain. The idea of being undressed and dressed by strangers when she was unconscious was not going down well, either.

Emotionally, she'd just about had enough. The thought crossed her mind that she'd never be able to collect her degree now, and that drove her briefly to rage.

She was not able to move, but whether that was due to the acceleration or the straps, she couldn't tell. The strain of trying, though, allowed her temper to cool and her humour to return.

"If I'd known they objected to me running in the streets this much, I might have looked where I was going. But, then, they could have afforded gold-plated bridges between the buildings for less than this."

Things were making less sense than ever. The vibrations stopped after a few hours, but she didn't know what that meant in practice. Without knowing how long she'd been travelling before she woke up, this could mean she was about to plunge to the ground over an equal length of time, a time she could spend contemplating whether she should have taken advantage of everything in that plane, whether there was a life after death and whether it would be any saner than the one she'd be departing.

Equally, it could mean she was now in space, where she would also die horribly and philosophically.

The straps were easier to undo, now the forces were not so strong. The straps floated around, bouncing into each other and the couch in strange ways.

"Net forces are about zero, which could still mean either possibility. I need to see out a window, but this is going to be dangerous."

She pushed herself very gently from the couch and flew slowly across the cabin. The bulk of the suit made this difficult and uncomfortable. She crashed into the far wall, at an angle she'd not expected, bouncing off. She was able to grab a protrusion and stabilize herself.

Grabbing the top of the hatch, using the orientation of writing to define top, she clambered through and found herself looking through a front window. Inky blackness with stars. Ok, not doomed to be a newly-named crater on Earth.

Retreating back, she found that behind the couch there was some food in sealed trays and some drink cartons, in a storage bin. Further back, there was a toilet with instructions written optimistically on the front. The crate with the stone was also there.

This included instructions on removing the spacesuit. Hmmm, that meant this place was pressurized. It also included instructions for putting it back on, with big warning stickers on the importance of this. As it had absorbed the impact of many collisions by now, she was inclined to agree.

Ok, the couch will just have to double as a bed.

There was enough food and drink to last four days. She was unclear what happened after that.

The next two days were uneventful aside from short bursts of rumbling. She assumed some sort of course correction, but she didn't bother to check.

Halfway through the third day, the rumbling slowly built up. Carol got onto the couch and strapped herself in. She didn't want to die when it was about to get fun.

The rocket went silent. Then there was a clang, followed by bangs and further clangs. Then it all went quiet.

Releasing the straps, she headed to the front window, where she found that the rocket was attached via the nose to something else. She couldn't tell what.

Below the window was a hatch. She had ignored it before, hatches to space weren't useful. Now, however, it led to the whatever it was. And that made it interesting.

Using her soft, delicate, lead-weighted boot, she kicked the hatch open and instantly regretted it. She remembered too late the dire warning of Newton, action and reaction are equal and opposite.

Smashing into the ceiling cracked her helmet a little and left her dazed. It took maybe half an hour before she was up to exploring.

Through the hatch and she entered... a slightly larger version of the room she had been in originally, with the couch. There was a hatch behind it, leading to a much smaller room. She estimated the walls to be maybe an additional metre thick, which was substantial. Inside of that was a glass vessel with an oxygen mask inside.

Removing her now largely useless suit outside, she clambered into the small room. A note was attached to the wall. She read it twice, before ranting quietly.

"Close all the airlocks completely, starting with the one on your capsule. Get into the glass cylinder, attach the IV line, put on the mask and wait. In case you're wondering, this inner room is shielded against most dangers. This ship is propelled by a mix of experimental ion drives and theoretical solar sails. We have no idea if it is going to work. You'll know when it is safe to get out. After that, examine the stone at your leisure."

Now, how did they know about the stone when they were building this?

Not one to obey orders until she had to, she ignored the instructions for now and brought the crate through. It was not easy in microgravity, as the hatches were almost too small. She made it eventually. There was a recess that she could place the crate in that locked it in place. As if it had been made to do just that.

She considered examining the stone now, but she was tired and frustrated. Time for the couch.

On day four, she decided she was really out of time. She was almost out of food and water, and might need that later. She moved what was left to the crampt room and closed the hatches and airlocks.

In the small room, she clambered into the to be, strapped herself in and squirted a little fluid from the IV to clear any bubbles. Attaching a line to herself was not easy but it was required for students to take a basic paramedic course. Oddly, only she turned up for that particular session. Oh. She'd been a damn fool.

She put the mask on. The air flowed easily. It was slightly warm and had a slight tint to it. She felt drowsy. The tank started filling but she really didn't notice...

It took only a short time to switch her blood to a liquid that would not cause cellular damage at low temperatures. Her heart had stopped and no brainwaves showed. The cells had been induced, through chemicals added to the food and drink, to enter a stable hibernation under these conditions.

The main engines fired. pushing the vast array of docked spaceship modules onto a slingshot orbit around Venus, using the planet to accelerate the ship far more than found be achieved by facing the rockets into deep space. The solar sails would also work much better so close to the sun.

Several years later, the ship was speeding past Saturn. The sun's rays were weak and the sails were coated in dust. Where they hadn't been ripped to shreds by the rocks that filled the inner solar system. The sails were jettisoned and a new set deployed. By the middle of the Kuiper belt, they too were useless and dispensed with.

An ion drive was then activated. It took three attempts by the onboard computer to shake off debris and activate the drive, but in the end it succeeded. The drive was not very powerful but was adequate. The hard radiation of interstellar space could deflect a vessel by enough to miss a target, the ion drive's job was to stop that happening.

And so, twenty-four years later, she should have awoken around Alpha Centauri.

She almost got there.

With three of the four light-years crossed, the ship's computer was preparing to deploy the solar sails needed to brake sufficiently to begin a slingshot around the new sun. It would never finish the task.

Caught in an unstable warp field, it was dragged over three hundred light-years off course. The computers gave up on trying to do anything for the time being, the data was erroneous. They were designed to be fault-tolerant, so did not crash, they merely waited.

Eventually the bubble temporarily collapsed and the ship fell out. The stars were unidentifiable by the computer, but a detectable star did exist that was of the same basic class as Sol and wasn't indicating dangerous radiation. The ion drives were sufficient to kick the vessel in the necessary direction. It would take about five hundred years to complete the journey.

Once sufficiently close, solar sails were deployed, slowing the vessel down. As the background radiation inside the main portion of the craft fell, the computers determined when levels were within the limits humans could tolerate.

Carol was slowly revived, her blood - mixed with xenon to prevent the cells failing as they awoke - was pumped back in. The complete process of warming, re-oxygenation and restarting the body took almost an hour to complete.

Her head swimming, she climbed out of the tube and gasped for air. The ship's life support was awakening from its long slumber and was having problems. Although it had five-fold redundancy everywhere, it wasn't engineered for such a lifespan. It was intended to handle a century at the tops and that was to cater for every failure the engineers could imagine.

The undergarments from her spacesuit were all but destroyed by time, but she did have a set of regular clothes in her suitcase. With no oxygen, no radiation and no heat, they'd survived adequately. Changing wasn't easy in microgravity, but she felt it necessary.

Opening the crate, she used the padding above the stone to cushion the inevitable crash against the ceiling. Taking more padding out and lining the end wall with it was easy. That meant she could slowly edge the stone there. Using further padding and the lid, she coaxed the stone to the main chamber.

And then she stared at it.

Why bring it out into space? Why bring her into space with it? None of this was making any kind of sense.

The computer detected something nearby. It didn't fit any known classification and it manoeuvred in a manner unlike a conventional object. Concluding it was a vessel, it emitted automatic distress calls on a range of frequencies.

Carol was oblivious to this and continued staring at the stone, looking for some logic. She was a good student, she had been told by some that she'd have a brilliant mind if she bothered to put the effort in, that might be part of why she was there. But she could make no sense of any of the symbols, no logic at all.

Yet, if she were to understand why she'd been marooned on the edge of nowhere, she would have to understand what it was that the university had seen in the stone and seen in her. She bitterly resented their cavalier attitude towards her life and her rights, but hoped that there was some reason. Something that could give her a solid why.

She paid no attention to anything else around her, totally absorbed by analysis and introspection.


	3. Rescue?

Disclaimer: My first Trek story. Standard disclaimers apply. TNG is owned by Paramount, except insofar as it exists in a parallel universe. Here's where the Star Trek elements begin. Please review.

Chapter 2 - Rescue

Stardate: 43140.1

The bridge of the Enterprise was as well-organized and efficient as always. So, when Commander Data notified Captain Picard that an ancient terrestrial artefact was in a prohibited part of space and that the Enterprise was the closest vessel, he immediately ordered the course to be laid in.

When they got to the system, the view was not what they had expected. A ship comprised of many tiny, primitive modules linked together, with a giant fifty kilometre solar sail stretching away.

Picard had never seen anything quite like this, but knew that the basic protocols in these situations had to be followed.

"Commander Data, can you identify it?"

"No, sir. There are no records of any ship to this design. However, I believe I can identify the capsules as late twentieth century or early twenty first. This design was abandoned before 2025 old calendar."

The captain was intrigued. He had dealt with ghost ships and cryogenic capsules, but even they were mostly much later than this.

"Are there any signs of life on board?"

He did not expect any, but it was procedure.

"Sensors are detecting one female. Life support on the vessel is unstable and may fail in the near future."

The captain turned to Deanna Troy, ship's counsellor. "Are you picking up anything?"

"There is a sense of anger, resentment and frustration."

Captain Picard frowned. If this was a prison ship, he would need to tread carefully. On the other hand, there should be no life on board at all. This was not a fabled generation ship, this was not much more than a bathtub with wings. A single person could not have lived this long unless something unusual was at work.

Data turned to face the captain.

"Sir, we are picking up what may be a distress signal. One of the channels is using an archaic system known as Morse, suggesting that the vessel is no later than the first decade of the twenty first century old calendar."

"I see. Can you put it through?"

"I'm afraid, sir, that it is data only."

"Mr Worf, Commander Data, I want you to beam across to the ship. Recover only the living person and any flight logs you can find."

Data and Worf left for the transporter room, their stations efficiently filled by crewmembers on standby for such a contingency.

Locking on to the room was without difficulty. Beaming across was simplicity itself. The much lower ceilings were the first problem. The second was the woman, who was as Data had predicted, been dressed in late twentieth century clothes. She was avidly studying a small flat slab of rock and was not about to be distracted.

Data was puzzled by her fascination and used his tricorder to scan the rock. "It would appear to be limestone, but there is something unidentified within it that is not terrestrial in origin."

"The captain specifically said only the human and the logs."

Data looked around and saw no controls. The woman either didn't notice them or was ignoring them and Data decided asking her would be pointless for right now. He scanned the area and detected a computer system in a well-shielded cavity next to a hatch to a very crampt room.

Opening the panel, the storage units for the communications, flight, navigation and scientific computers were clearly marked. He powered the storage rack down before extracting the units.

Worf, in the meantime, was torn. He had tried advancing towards the woman who first tried to brush him off and then grabbed the stone tablet when he persisted. His orders were computers and woman. It was quite irregular to include other things as well.

However, he didn't get to choose. As Data finished retrieving the systems, they were notified that life support was shutting down. Thus, woman, stone and storage were all retrieved by the simple fact that they hadn't time to do anything else.

On the bridge, Commander Worf noted a massive, unexpected, power surge in the vicinity of transporter room 2, but as it quickly vanished he merely logged it and sent word to engineering.

In the transporter room itself, things were a bit more lively, as sensors briefly suggested the signal had been lost. A moment later, the signal strength was almost overloading the circuits as materialization commenced. The engineer fought to keep the transporter operational, as power levels fluctuated wildly.

Once safely back and the woman - somewhat stunned and frightened by her sudden change in environment - escorted to sickbay (the rock separated from her by gravity, although both remained intact), the ship was destroyed by photon torpedoes and phaser fire, the sails necessitating the torpedoes due to their size. Regrettable, the captain thought, as that was a truly intriguing vessel. Still, the scans and logs should provide all the necessary information.

Talking of information, he was perturbed by the transporter room incident but decided that engineering should fully evaluate the issue before any further action would be taken.

Carol found herself lying on a hard surface. She vaguely remembered some strange looking people but dismissed those from her thoughts. They couldn't have been there, therefore they weren't, she decided. It was clearly an after-effect of something given her, yet another of these abominable diversions the university was plaguing her with, or a hallucination from studying too hard.

She had spent the last half hour increasingly hysterical until she felt suddenly much calmer. So obviously an effect of a drug, therefore it could all be put down to that.

Having rationalized her concerns, she opened her eyes. And instantly regretted it. Obviously the hallucination was worse than she thought. That's why she wasn't hysterical, she had gone insane. Interesting insanity, though. Wasn't insanity supposed to include things like talking ants, vanishing cats or other impossibilities? True, it was only first glance but it seemed that solid surfaces were solid, injections were injected, light cast shadows and gravity operated on everything.

Maybe she had a highly refined insanity, delusions of such quality that she'd actually built in a complete set of laws of physics. But, then, how could she ever tell? The only difference was that you could test reality and it wouldn't break. A delusion could never be that perfect. Assuming she could think straight enough to tell.

The whirling thoughts threatened to overwhelm her. The only reason she wasn't glad as she passed out was that she was unconscious.

Meanwhile, Captain Picard and Commander Data were inspecting the tablet.

"This survived the fall, unchipped, despite its obvious fragility. You say there is nothing unusual about the rock."

"It would appear to be perfectly ordinary, Captain, aside from the embedded component."

"What can you tell me about the inscription?"

"The language is unknown to me, sir. The structuring appears to be dominated by hierarchies of groups. A most unusual format. I can determine nothing further."

"What do we know about the young woman?"

"She is definitely of European descent, from the last decade of the twentieth century. Her identity has not been established."

"The vessel she was travelling in?"

"There are no records of any attempts at deep space travel from the established point in time. The cryogenic system was built using technology from that time but no records have survived of any such system being built or developed. Both showed serious design flaws which indicate a lack of development or testing. This may indicate a test flight."

"What information were you able to extract from the logs?"

"It would appear she did not volunteer for her flight and has no training in space flight. The journey was originally intended to travel from lunar orbit to Alpha Centauri. She was placed in cryogenic suspension and was to be revived on reaching the destination. The bulk of the journey was to be performed by solar sail. Sensor readings indicate this was primarily a scientific exploration, with no indication of any role for the passenger."

So, he still couldn't rule out some sort of prison ship but the scientific element made it unlikely.

"Is there any way it could have reached here under its own power?"

"No, sir. Even at light-speed it could not have travelled to this sector. Anomalies in the sensor readings would be compatible with being carried here by a warp-capable vehicle. The vessel would have shown no signs of life and may have been invisible due to its size."

A ship dragged far off course, its passenger - she could not apparently be regarded as crew - an impossible distance away from home in both space and time. This was going to divert resources to solve. As always, the Enterprise was busy and he didn't have time to spend on it.

"Spend only what time you can spare on it. Otherwise, once she is released from sickbay, have her placed in a suitable room. Counsellor Troy should spend time with her, see what she can find out. I don't want this to divert us any further than it has to."

Counsellor Troy was, at that moment, standing next to the bed of a shell-shocked Carol. There was no getting away from the fact that this was not the present day she had been expecting, even allowing for being a few months or years adrift due to the constant gassing, drugging and general incapacitating. Everyone she knew, good and bad, would be so much dust at this point.

She found herself mourning the degree program more than anything, though. There would be people a third her age now who knew more than her. The benefit would be zero, the sacrifices worthless, the headaches from being yelled at for her style of crowd navigation would now be just pain with no gain. She was here because of all those things, but she'd be living her life pitied and nothing more. She had tried to explain this to the councillor but she didn't feel heard. Only pitied.

Counsellor Troy escorted her, after a while, to a small room and showed her how to access the amenities and use the replicator. Before the counsellor left, Carol asked if she could have access to the computer. Troy pondered this.

"Yes, but it will be very limited access. Do not abuse it and do not attempt to use any of the communications systems. Just tell the computer what it is you wish to know. I would prefer it, though, if you waited until I returned."

Not a chance, thought Carol. If I want to stay sane, I must stay busy.

After the counsellor left, Carol pondered on precisely how to formulate a question so as to be sure of not abusing anything. "Ummm, computer? Ummm, what information do you have on Carol Duncan, born Cambridge, England, on October thirty-first, in nineteen seventy eight, to a Peter and Elizabeth Duncan?"

The computer's response was annoying. "No information is available."

That could mean anything. That she had over-specified, that records had been lost, that the university, the criminal organization or a national government had got rid of the records, or that the computer simply didn't store every scrap of information on the human race and thus had no information available.

This did place certain limitations on uncovering anything the university might have found out in that time, though, as she had been relying on her proximity to the matter to arrange access.

The next thing was to see if any batches of related records were lost. She was able to ascertain she could find records on her parents, her younger sister and her university. Well, that didn't rule anything out but it did make deliberate deletion a little more likely than lack of space on the computer here. Wherever "here" was. She still wasn't sure where that was.

Even if it had been deliberate, she had a decent memory and could fill things in. Of course, with nobody to vouch for her, none of the places mattering and other than perhaps the occasional historian - did they even still have those? - having much interest, the value of the information was suspect.

"Computer, what information do you have on the stone retrieved with me?"

"Access to that information is denied."

Carol wondered if she should thank the computer or throw things at it. She opted instead for getting a large cup of coffee. She was normally a tea drinker but needed something stronger.

She persuaded the... replicator? to give her a pad of paper and a pencil. With this, she drew out the symbols on the stone. If she was going to be stumped, then she was going to be stumped by things of her choosing.

She was still studying these when Councillor Troy returned.

"It is good that you have found something to do, but I sense you are unhappy."

"I'm here because of these symbols and that stone. What I don't know is why."

Troy frowned slightly. "Tell me what you do know."

"This is going to sound very strange. I was ordered to steal it from a gang of thieves..."

Troy worked hard to keep a straight face. Carol was being honest, but she was the absolute worst possible thief anyone could choose. She did not appear to have any trait found in a thief or indeed any other kind of criminal she had ever encountered.

"...and then discovered that I was supposed to be caught so that the stone could be bought from the thieves. After that, I was drugged and put in a rocket, then drugged again and sent into deep space. That's all I know."

Troy was confused but didn't show it.

"I sense there's something else."

"I tried looking up my information. I don't seem to exist. I was able to find out about my parents and my sister, but nothing about me. I keep wondering if it's related to the problem of the stone, although I suspect it's more likely a case of information going missing."

Troy got the definite impression Carol might well suspect other things as well.

"You exist, does it really matter about the information?"

"Well, the university seems to have gone to a lot of trouble, if I knew why, I might know more about the stone. Since I'm a part of that trouble and went missing because of it, I thought..."

"That it might tell you something. But does it help you to worry about it?"

"Yes, yes it does. I think better when I'm stirred up. I'm even more relaxed than when I'm calm, if that makes any sense. I don't imagine you use the expression 'in the zone', but it's almost a euphoric feeling of being one with a problem."

Troy smiled. "I am familiar with the expression, yes. What do you do for fun, for you, though?"

Carol paused for a moment. "Thinking and learning really are my idea of fun. This idea that fun has to be something different, or that work has to be, doesn't sit well with me. It's a fiction, anyway. I've tried things people have suggested as fun, to try them out. They leave me depressed and miserable, and it can take weeks to build up to my usual cheer and pace afterwards."

"Depressed?"

"Miserable, lethargic, loss of appetite, suicidal thoughts..."

"Do you have suicidal ideation at the moment?"

"No, I have these symbols to unravel. They're a very complex problem and I've only been able to crack part of it. You see..."

At that moment, Troy's communicator beeped.

"Counsellor Troy, can you meet me in my ready room?" the captain's voice said.

"I'm on my way sir."

Troy tapped her badge. "I'm very sorry, but I have to leave. We should discuss you more when I get back."

Carol sighed as Troy left. The girl meant well, but you can't treat a computer like a hamster and you can't treat a Carol like a normal person. She had no interest in being normal and regarded the cold, hard vacuum of space a preferable alternative. She was not broken, she just wasn't standard issue.

She went back to the symbols, this time scribbling a diagram on a fresh piece of paper. "If we see this as a two-dimensional encoding of a non-simple three-dimensional graph, and information outside the graph to be weights rather than symbols, we get..."

Commander Data had been instructed to work on the problem of the stone tablet, as the current mission was relatively routine and did not require the android's speed or acumen. The tablet, however, did. As it contained non-terrestrial technology of unknown purpose and thus a potential hazard, it was in a secure room with forcefield placed around the room. Data could thus examine the stone without interference and without any potential risk.

Understanding it had proved elusive, however. The symbols were from an unknown symbol family and mentally substituting the symbols for those in other languages programmed into him revealed only that it did not match any of them.

He straightened and decided to visit Carol. It was possible she knew something that might shed some light onto it.

Carol was again staring at the symbols, a growing pile of scrunched up paper beside her.

"May I ask if you are having any success?" Data enquired.

Carol jumped slightly. She had not heard him come in.

"No, no, the structure is definitely the key to it, those boxes are definitely a structure diagram, but it's not three dimensional, it doesn't seem to be four dimensional, and that's definitely data about the structure outside the boxes but I can't find any way for it to be vector lengths as these boxes here and here..."

She pointed her pencil at two groups of three boxes...

"...form triangles and we aught to be able to deduce something about the relationships of the symbols from that. But if we do that, then..."

She pointed out a group of five boxes...

"...these would need to be a valid solution. And they aren't."

Data thought for a moment.

"You are looking for geometric relationships, then."

"The symbols are simple geometric, the tablet looked like a perfect square, this structure is some sort of graph or topology, it seems to be written in the language of mathematics. The question is which discipline."

"What were you told about the tablet, on Earth?"

Carol explained the circumstances of obtaining it, the now-missing records and her suspicion that the university had a lot more information.

She and Commander Data ran through the computer a range of questions to establish if the records had indeed gone - which indeed seemed to be the case - and whether any records existed pertaining to unusual artefacts, disruptive students, mysterious scripts or a rocket program.

Of these, only the rocket program yielded results. The space centre Carol had departed from had launched almost fifty very large rockets into lunar orbit, the last one about the time Carol had arrived there. Chasing the names and the money yielded only dead-ends.

The aircraft proved better. It had been chartered in a hurry by the Vice Chancellor of the university. He seemed to be very interested in the search for extra-terrestrials, but only as of ten years before the first rocket and five days after returning from an archaeological expedition he was sponsoring.

Archaeological reports yielded nothing of interest, which Carol thought very interesting.

"If the ancient astronaut theory had anything to it, wouldn't you expect something more than one tablet?"

Data tilted his head in consideration. "That would be a reasonable assumption. If these reports are complete, it might then have been the tablet itself that indicated something extraterrestrial in nature. However, the rock is terrestrial. There is something inside that is not, but Earth science at that time would not have been able to determine that without breaking the rock. Which clearly they did not do."

"Then the only explanation is that he had access to something that acted as a Rosetta stone."

"I find that an interesting theory. Computer, did Vice Chancellor Harris have a collection of archaeological artefacts and, if so, how many?"

"Vice Chancellor Harris' estate donated five hundred artefacts to museums on his death."

"Display, please, ten per second, alphabetical order."

A minute later, he gave another instruction. "Please display item three hundred and twelve."

There was a second tablet, similar to the first, with a different pattern.

Carol blinked. "That wouldn't help, though."

"You are correct. Computer, display the reverse side."

This showed an incredibly large number of short lines with arrows, chipped into the rock.

"Fascinating." Data remarked. "This is very early cuneiform, but that was generally written onto soft clay using a stylus or pressed in using a stamp. They had no means of carving such fine detail at the time of this text."

"What does it say?"


	4. Drink Mixes

Disclaimer: My first Trek story. Standard disclaimers apply. TNG is owned by Paramount, except insofar as it exists in a parallel universe. Please review.

Chapter 3 - Drink Mixes

Data considered the question. "It is not written in any language that I am familiar with."

Carol sighed, then stopped. "Wait! If it led to a conclusion, then maybe we do not need to read it, as I doubt anyone at the university could have if the language is unknown to you. There must be something sufficient in what is present. Dog in the night-time, what's missing is able to tell us something."

"You are familiar with the work of Conan Doyle, I assume."

"I've read some of his stories, enough to understand how some of the ideas tie in to actual scientific techniques. Is there any way to organize the information on the obverse side using a consistent set of rules so as to produce a one-to-one correspondence with the reverse side?"

Data fed the necessary program into the computer.

"My positronic brain is capable of the required task, but it would divert excessive resources should I be required by the captain for any reason", he explained.

Carol only partially understood this, although she had figured out he was an android and knew that a positron was an anti-electron. The task didn't seem that complicated, indeed almost couldn't be. She said so, before realizing this might not be terribly politic under the circumstances.

Data did not seem offended, if indeed he was capable of offence.

"We know someone took only a few years to reach a conclusion. They may have encountered it by chance and thus by a method that cannot be reproduced. They may have had further information we know nothing of, with the same result. And it is also possible they reached the right conclusion for the wrong reason."

Carol blushed slightly. She hadn't considered the possibility she had been dumped into space because of an error. It was not a comfortable thought. Nor was the possibility that she stared down death for reasons she might never know because someone got lucky.

Data waited for her to recover her composure slightly, before his next question.

"It would seem that the Vice Chancellor believed you capable of decoding this text without such aids. May I ask what it is that might have given him such confidence."

"I solve logic problems, I've completed lateral thinking courses but I have no other real skills. I was only a third of the way into my second year of undergraduate studies, so have done no novel research and have read very little of the work of others. I'm marginally better at mathematics than average – well, the average for my class. I am probably hopelessly behind even the children of this time."

"You have a concern regarding your future. It is true that your intended path in life may no longer be the correct course of action for you, but I do not think that means that you need be concerned. In the matter of your skills, I confess I do not see at this time the reason. It would appear, from what you have said, that you were chosen very specifically."

Carol dismissed that from her mind. "I could have been chosen for the wrong reason or they may have misinterpreted my abilities. If they had misunderstood the problem, they may have made wrong assumptions. We can't begin to guess except in hindsight, when it is no longer useful."

At that point the computer interrupted and signalled three possible rules that would produce a match. Data selected the first one to be displayed.

Carol could instantly see that it was wrong. It felt… wrong. Her intuition screamed that it was wrong. Then the logical parts of her brain kicked in, feeding in the specifics. The rules were encoded geometrically on a geometric surface and related to geometric patterns, so it had to be geometric thinking. The first possibility worked, yes, but the rule was not geometrical but relied instead on exotic properties of specific signals and statistics.

The second pattern seemed more likely to her. An intricate weaving of connections that danced and connected. The flat image was taken as encoding a multidimensional projection such that the geometric symbols on the insides of shapes interacted whenever the outside symbols matched. Each projection became a line of symbols and a given symbol in the projection always matched the same symbol in the cuneiform. Complicated, very complicated, but at least the underlying ideas related to the underlying ideas in the image itself.

The third solution used a hierarchy regular expressions, with the outside symbol denoting an operation type. This was simple, elegant and from a totally different branch of mathematics. This wasn't visual but analytical. It felt… dry. Dusty. And yet somehow a part of things. Carol wasn't one to talk in terms of yin and yang, yet she knew the concept came up a lot in nature. She was not willing to discard this just yet.

Data generated the corresponding cuneiform using the two potential rule sets and Carol quickly transcribed them onto paper. She glared at the two texts. "One of these is correct. But as we can't read this language, how do we know which one?"

She paused.

"...No, that can't be right."

"May I enquire what it is you have rejected?"

"What if they're both right? What if the text in the first case is a case where the rules produce the same answer, but in this case they are supposed to produce two? In the same way that many Shakespearean plays have multiple meanings."

"An interesting hypothesis but, as you say, it would be impossible to determine as we cannot read the language. This has been a most informative discussion. I shall return to the artefact and see if there is anything further I can determine from it."

Data did not go directly to the object, though. He went first to his quarters, where he sketched out both sides of the Vice Chancellor's stone and the front of the stone found with Carol, along with the two potential cuneiform texts the computer had derived. Armed with these sketches, he made his way to Ten Forward.

Guinan was, as always, there and greeted him. "What do you have there?"

Data showed her the sketches and explained the circumstances. He had been given no order to keep anything regarding Carol confidential and had concluded she would need the help of Guinan at some point.

"Fascinating... I think I would like to meet this Carol. As for these inscriptions... You say they make no sense."

"The cuneiform symbols represent sounds. These sounds do not correspond to words in any known language. I will attempt to speak the first line."

He got no further than the seventh syllable before Guinan's head snapped up, and no further than the tenth before being gestured to stop, Guinan's face in alarm.

"From your reaction, may I conclude that you are familiar with the language."

"Yes, although the race that spoke it is now, fortunately, extinct."

"Would you care to elaborate?"

"They were a violent, warlike people, dissimilar to the Klingons only in having no concept of honour and demanding blood sacrifices. Even much of their technology required the blood of a captive for power, never a slave, but ideally a young... Ah. You may have been just in time. Had she succeeded in activating the device, it might have killed her. From what I understand, it would not have been pleasant."

"Indeed. It is most curious that such a device would be on Earth."

"They enslaved low technology planets, partly for the aggressive energy they could tap and partly because they were easy targets. They enslaved low technology planets, partly for the aggressive energy they could tap and partly because they were easy targets. I think this was one of their transporter systems, miniaturized and storing all the energy necessary within them. The people of a planet such as Earth would, through wars and raids, without intending to, move the means of being attacked into those places they were most vulnerable. Mystical trophies. On surviving planets, such devices were only ever remembered dimly in subsequent legends, the horror too great to remember directly."

"The Trojan Horse."

"Precisely."

"We should destroy the device, then"

"No. If the device was partially activated by Carol, the energy you put in..."

"Would in fact destroy everything around the stone on Earth."

"Or possibly the Earth itself, if you kept delivering power."

"How must one deactivate it?"

"Fully activate it first. It's the only way."

"That would require a human sacrifice."

"It would require sacrificing Carol. If she has activated it, then it would be tuned specifically to her. Of course, if it's not activated, that would mean sacrificing her for nothing."

"Is there any other way?"

"Not that I know. And if it is activated, either now or in the future, it could lead to the accidental destruction of Earth."

Commander Data created a facial expression of unhappiness.

"I cannot countenance human sacrifice, nor will the captain."

"Nor I, but it is not hard to imagine that some on Earth will consider it. As long as Carol can be sent there, she is in danger."

"If we retrieved the artefact from Earth, we could close the loop and destroy them together."

"Can you find the one on Earth? From what you have said, you only know where it was, over four hundred and seventy years ago. There have been a lot of upheavals in that time."

Data spent the next couple of days analysing the device to see if the artefact was indeed open. As sensors were blocked when looking at the artefact inside the stone, this involved looking for anomalies in the stone itself that could indicate existing radiation.

Finding the artefact on Earth would not be possible until the Enterprise's mission was complete, but he was unsure if it was needed. The problem was, as it was an unknown device, the only time he could be certain would be if the device was at least partially active. If it were, he would need the second device. If it were not, destroying both together would be the only safe solution, which necessitated finding it anyway.

Captain Picard was not pleased at the prospect of travelling to Earth, as it would be an excessive diversion from his next mission. He therefore called up an old friend on Earth to see if the stone could be found. It was much more practical to have it brought to the Enterprise, if it could be found at all.

He concurred with Data's recommendation that Carol should not be informed of developments.

Meanwhile, Deanna Troy was intensely frustrated. Carol was not responding in the manner of most humans. Her value system, emotions and interpretations were strange and she had no desire to be any different. In the hopes of gaining an insight, she took Carol to a Holodeck that was not currently in use.

"We can generate any environment or experience in here. Tell me something you would like and I will program it."

Carol considered this. "It's a simulation?"

"Not quite. Objects are real, other than you not being able to take them out of the holodeck. Heat, cold, dry, wet, windy, calm, everything you'd feel is there, except that safety features prevent harm coming to you."

Carol could imagine how a lot of the crew of a spaceship might use such technology. She had other ideas, though.

And so, an agonizing few minutes and a very confused Counsellor later, they entered the holodeck.

"Incoming message, captain! It's from Earth on priority."

Worf's voice sounded more surly than ever, as there had been little to do over the past few days but wait.

"I'll take it in my ready room."

Captain Picard quickly moved from his chair to the room. Priority messages weren't usually good. In this case, it turned out to be from his friend.

"The good news is that we have found the stone."

"That's excellent news! But this didn't require a priority transmission."

"Where we found it, unfortunately, does. It's being used in the foundation for a reactor core in an area that's poorly supplied with power. We can't take it offline for the time it would take and we can't remove the stone unless we do."

"I see..."

"It gets worse. Experiments at your end appear to be causing energy fluctuations here, which could disrupt containment. Which is why it's urgent the experiments stop before we have a core breach."

"That would suggest..."

"...That the device is partially active, yes. So you can't destroy just that stone."

Picard frowned. His options were to sacrifice the girl or to find some other means to shut the device down. He couldn't go to Earth and look for another solution there, there wasn't time. But if experiments could not be conducted on the stone, finding an alternative method would be difficult. It looked like it would have to work first time.

After notifying Data, he called Geordie. "I need you and commander Data to come up with something that will close the device down."

"That won't be easy, if we can only study it passively."

Troy, Guinan and Carol were relaxing in Guinan's quarters.

Well, Troy was. Guinan was mixing powders in a drink according to a recipe she had just acquired. Carol was watching intensely.

"If... the... mix... is... not... perfect... it…"

The drink erupted in flames out of the top of the glass.

"Can I try?" Carol asked shyly.

"Sure!"

Guinan handed the glass over and filled it up.

Carol placed the glass down, then took a fistful of one powder, allowing it to run slowly out onto a large sheet of paper she'd obtained, forming a complex geometric shape. She did this again with the second powder, but drew a different shape. She then carefully rolled the paper up by one corner, before tipping it slowly into the glass.

The liquid frothed and foamed, but remained liquid, although swirls of colour were now visible.

"Fascinating..." Guinan said, at last.

"It seemed that it was not just the ratio but relative positions that mattered", Carol said. "I just drew each of the positions that seemed to work best, then unwove them. If you mix the steps, rather than the powders, the powders mix themselves."

"You are a remarkable young woman."

Carol shrugged. "Patterns are easy. People are more of a problem, but as they find me the same way, there's usually enough distance to avoid problems."

"That must be a very lonely way to live."

"Not really, it's lonelier for me to feel different and unwanted, someone others would rather replace with a mind of their choosing or get rid of entirely. Being alone is the one time I ever feel I'm around those who accept me, even if that's just me."

"Do you feel unaccepted right now?"

Carol glanced briefly at the counsellor.

Guinan tilted her head. "Perhaps there are many ways to accept."

It was spoken to Carol, but Troy felt she was included in that.

Guinan spoke again. "Would you want the company of others, if they weren't a problem and didn't see you as one?"

"I... might. I would be willing to try it, if that is what you suggest, but I can't tell you what I would enjoy before I know."

Guinan nodded and filled a second glass. "Please show me how you did this, again."


	5. Sacrifice

Disclaimer: My first Trek story. Standard disclaimers apply. TNG is owned by Paramount, except insofar as it exists in a parallel universe. Please review.

Chapter 4 - Sacrifice

The Enterprise's chief engineer and, indeed, top engineer if you didn't include Data, was consulting with Data on the problem.

"Passive scans show a strange negative energy flux, what do you make of it Data?"

"Negative energy is associated with some primitive quantum teleporters, but I must confess I have not seen anything quite like this."

"Do you think we can shut this thing down?"

Data paused, running through the possibilities in his positronic mind.

"We can certainly shut it down, but we had best hope for a technological solution. For Carol's sake."

Geordie shuddered involuntarily. Life and death situations were common enough on the Enterprise, but this had a different flavour.

"I thought that if you put positive energy into something held open using negative energy that it collapsed. But here, everything goes through."

"That is most mysterious, I agree." Data responded.

"Now, what if the positive and negative were being reversed? What if what we're seeing as negative energy is simply the ambient radiation being inverted."

Data tilted his head, then pulled over some screens. "If that is correct, we can adjust the incidental positive energy it is exposed to. This should vary the flux density of negative energy."

"And then, if that works, we could reflect the negative, turning it positive, collapsing the connection."

"We must not count our avians before they have departed their self-contained incubation chambers."

Geordie smiled. Sometimes, Data said such things because he didn't understand the expression, but in a few cases he suspected Data had developed a proto sense of humour.

It had been another rough day of not doing much. Carol was sitting, trying to meditate and failing utterly. The door signalled. Grateful for the diversion, she turned towards it. "Come in."

It was Guinan. "I have come to thank you for some of those drink recipes you gave me. Had I known you were so skilled in such things, I would have looked you up sooner."

"I... only just came aboard... I'm from the twentieth century on Earth..."

Guinan smiled. "I know."

Carol had known human lifespans were short, compared to many higher animals on Earth, but had not thought about that or how it might apply on other worlds...

...Other worlds... That could be travelled from...

Had Guinan been on twentieth century Earth?

Still, that didn't matter, as Guinan was speaking again.

"The Federation is very big, there are many, many recipes, but as you were showing me the last couple of times, they can all be turned into shapes. Many recipes, even from different worlds, on a single shape. I would value your assistance."

"You want me to be a field researcher for you?"

Guinan considered. "Something like that. The galaxy is very big and your intuitive sense seems better than a recipe on a computer screen."

Carol thought about it. It wasn't what she'd expected to do with her life, but everything she'd expected to do no longer existed. She craved relevance, specifically the relevance that went with utilizing her skills. This would be doing something, something legal, to help someone who seemed to understand what it felt like to be alone. She didn't know why Guinan understood, or how, but it didn't seem to matter. The counsellor was very nice, but not in any way that Carol cared for. She seemed... a little too certain of her views at times.

"I'm not sure I know how to travel around..."

"It's not as difficult as it might seem, as there's no currency…"

The two women started planning.

Geordie and Data were examining the results of their relatively passive experiments. It looked good. Reducing the exposure to ambient radiation had indeed reduced the negative energy produced.

"If this thing turns positive into negative, how does it transport things?" Geordie wondered.

"I am thinking it works analogously to a transporter, with the exception of using non-simply-connected spaces. A surge of positive energy produces a backlash of negative energy, that converts you into energy, which can then pass through the gateway. The interference patterns we are detecting could be used to reconstitute the object or person at the far end."

"And the sacrifice?"

"Their slow atomization would seem to be the necessary surge of positive energy."

"But why the blood aspect? That's what creeps me out, Data."

"Creeping is not required, in this case. Blood is easy to obtain. It would then be easy to release enough energy to activate the atomization process. It also allows the device to be keyed to an individual through DNA."

"Wait. If the device is keyed to a DNA signature, then if we disrupt the key to a value that can't exist or to no value at all..."

"You would then have a device that cannot be further activated."

"If it's no value at all, Data, then wouldn't it sense everything as meeting the signature? It would then try to activate with no energy to do so."

"That is a possibility, although we do not know what energy the other side has available to it."

"So we're left with trying to starve it."

"That would appear to be the case."

"I have a reflector here that should work on negative energy."

"Place it at a slight angle to the left edge. If the negative energy flux increases on the flat side but decreases along the side, we have successfully controlled the path of it."

"Readings show... it's working. Almost all of the negative energy has been redirected. Ninety seven point three percent."

"That is better than I had anticipated and should be sufficient. Is it necessary for the reflectors to be flat, or can they be parabolic?"

"We couldn't fit in the equipment to make a parabolic negative energy reflector, even in a shuttle bay."

"Then we will need sixteen reflectors, forming two pyramids and four triangles, to be certain of sending sufficient negative energy into the core of the device. However, before we do that, we must determine if the negative energy becomes positive."

Data picked up the generator and panned it quickly across the front of the stone. The stone hissed and a small crack appeared in one corner.

"The readings suggest it tried to add extra matter within the stone itself. The negative energy flux recoiled and contracted sharply."

"On that basis, assuming the negative energy has fixed frequency, to get the interference pattern inside the stone, the reflectors must be three quarters of the length of the stone."

"I'll get to work on them."

Captain Picard was beginning to relax when Commander Data reached him by communicator. Involuntarily, he tensed up.

"We believe we have found a way to deactivate the stone, sir."

"Excellent. What is your assessment of the risks and probability of success?"

"It is not altogether certain, sir. The procedure can be automated, so we can place the stone in a shuttle and remotely deactivate it."

"What would be the effect on Earth?"

"That, too, is unclear. I believe it likely the stone will crack and expand slightly."

"I will notify Earth. How soon can you be ready?"

"Within six hours, sir."

"If it's determined that this will not constitute a threat to the reactor, I want you to proceed immediately they have given the all clear."

"Understood, sir. I will start preparing a shuttle for use but will not install the stone itself at this time."

It took nearer eighteen hours to get the go-ahead. The potential vibrations had to be damped and additional support was installed.

The problem lay in the initial activation. Data and Geordie simply couldn't find a way to generate a sufficiently large background flux of suitable energy. The stone seemed increasingly resistant to the equipment they tried.

Captain Picard, who had joined them, offered an idea.

"How good are the reflectors?"

"They're extremely efficient, sir."

"And they won't be interfered with by a forcefield."

"No, sir."

"Could Carol provide sufficient activation energy to trigger the system and be transported out safely?"

"In principle, yes, sir. It would be..."

The captain cut him off. "If it's the only alternative, make it so."

"Yes sir."

Carol was understandably reluctant at being fed, however partially, into a device that was programmed to kill her. Especially as she had had the first glimmer of hope. However, as the alternatives were explained, she saw that they were incalculably worse. And, unlike this plan, the probability of escape for those involved was zero.

She was escorted by Data, who had firm instructions that she be delivered on time by whatever means necessary. This seemed excessive to Data, but his programming did not support running counter to legitimate orders. Fortunately, reason was adequate.

She was placed in the shuttle with a piece of paper containing the phonetic transcription of the symbols Data had transcribed and instructions to only read them until she could feel things start.

"As if I'd read one syllable more!", she muttered to herself.

She had been given a comms badge so that the transporter room could stay locked on to her at all times.

"Remember, as soon as the process starts, we will transport you to safety." Picard had assured her.

She was not entirely convinced. They needed the stone destroyed. Why risk letting it escape complete destruction?

Over the communicator, she could hear Commander Data. "Start reading from the text... now..."

On the bridge, Data monitored the sensors closely, along with information relayed from the shuttle.

"We are detecting a build-up of energy. The process does appear to be working. The buildup has reached fifty percent of criticality... It will reach critical in five... four... three... two... Data to transporter room, energize now."

Moments later, the shuttle exploded violently.


	6. Aftermath

Disclaimer: My first Trek story. Standard disclaimers apply. TNG is owned by Paramount, except insofar as it exists in a parallel universe. Please review.

Chapter 5 - Aftermath

On the transporter pad lay Carol, sobbing, her whole body bleeding profusely. The paper she had been reading from was heavily stained red, as were her clothes.

Doctor Crusher, who had been placed on standby there, immediately transported her to sickbay.

Back in the bridge, a priority message came in from Earth. This was put to the main screen.

"I don't know what you're playing at, Picard! The reactor is still operational but it was very close. There was enormous damage to the facility, even with the forcefields we had put in place."

"But everything is under control and nobody was injured, correct?"

"Yes, that is correct."

"Then I fail to see the problem, Admiral. The possibility of actual disaster, now or in the future, has been averted entirely."

"You should have warned us. We were under the impression that we were faced with something minor, and took additional precautions accordingly."

"And I would like to extend my congratulations on your approach in dealing with the unknown."

The Admiral scowled and cut communications.

In sickbay, Crusher was concerned. Carol had lost a lot of blood, although that was easily fixed. The mental damage would be harder to anticipate. She had been transported just as the connection had gone critical and thus wrenched out of something unknown and malign. That would be for others to solve in the long term, but for now, it was a matter of giving her anti-anxiety and trauma-suppression drugs.

There was also some physical damage. The shockwave from a blast had apparently only just reached Carol, enough to shatter ribs and burn clothes onto skin. That would take time to fix but it was not stuff she didn't deal with on a regular basis.

Carol would be up and about again, but what then?

A question Counsellor Troy was asking, too. The girl would never trust Starfleet again and carried so many issues from past betrayal and danger that Troy feared she was beyond help.

A month later and they were visiting a remote outpost. Carol was to be sent to the spacestation for retrieval by the next supply vessel.

"Remember what I said", Guinan said to her. "Recipes for drinks and mixes."

Carol smiled, although the deep scarring that remained on the left side of her face made the effect look like a surrealist painting. "Drinks and mixes."


End file.
